Shinju by Laura Joh Rowland

When beautiful, wealthy Yukiko and low-born artist Noriyoshi are found drowned together in a shinju, or ritual double suicide, everyone believes the culprit was forbidden love. Everyone but newly appointed yoriki Sano Ichiro.

Despite the official verdict and warnings from his superiors, the shogun's Most Honorable Investigator of Events, Situations, and People suspects the deaths weren't just a tragedy -- they were murder. Risking his family's good name and his own life, Sano will search for a killer across every level of society -- determined to find answers to a mystery no one wants solved. No one but Sano...

As subtle and beautiful as the culture it evokes, Shinju vividly re-creates a world of ornate tearooms and guady pleasure-palaces, cloistered mountaintop convents and dealthy prisons. Part love story, part myster, Shinju is a tour that will dazzle and entertain all who enter its world.

BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Laura Joh Rowland's The Shogun's Daughter.

LAURA JOH ROWLAND is the author of fifteen previous Sano Ichiro mysteries, which have twice been named Best Mysteries of the Year by Publishers Weekly. She lived through a natural disaster when Hurricane Katrina nearly destroyed her house in New Orleans, and now lives in New York City.

Unrated Critic Reviews for Shinju

Kirkus Reviews

When a doctor sentenced to service in the Edo morgue convinces Sano that Noriyoshi, at least, was killed before he entered the water in which he and Yukiko supposedly drowned themselves, Sano feels honor-bound to follow up the clue.

Publishers Weekly

Sano Ichiro, a samurai whose academic background puts him at odds with most of his peers, discovers two bodies in the Sumida River, a man and woman bound together in what appears to have been a shinju, or ``double love suicide.'' The man is a peasant, the woman the high-born daughter of an import...